New Books in Philosophy

Central to modern biology and the study of life is the concept of the organism—roughly, a body with interconnected parts that make specific contributions to the development and functioning of the whole. There are...

You can stock your life with important work, relationships, activities, and art, and yet, you can still ask: what's the point of it all? Almost every thinking person has had that question—many more than once. Granted...

How does coloniality shape the sociosomatic possibilities of our bodies? More importantly, how do gender-nonconforming people not only resist the limitations of that coloniality but also make, connect to, and revitalize...

When it comes to consciousness, William James is well-known for his descriptions of it rather than his theory of it and its relation to the body. In Consciousness is Motor: William James on Mind and Action (Oxford UP...

The cybernetic tradition in cognitive science analyzes the purposive behavior of many complex systems – from sensory-guided missiles to sensory-guided animals -- in terms of feedback control that maintains stability in...

Andrew Lister's Justice and Reciprocity (Oxford University Press, 2024) examines the place of reciprocity in egalitarianism, focusing on John Rawls's conception of "justice as fairness." Reciprocity was a central to...

Humans are highly inquisitive, yet fallible and cognitively limited. How can we improve our epistemic lot despite our limitations? In Epistemic Ecology (MIT Press, 2025), Catherine Elgin develops a model in which...

What happens if we turn to James Baldwin, not just for the amazing quotations and excellent photos, but as a critical theorist? What if we read his nonfiction philosophically? What can Baldwin help us understand and do...

While we tend to think of biological individuals in terms of paradigmic cases – a dog, a starfish, a bacterium – our ordinary criteria for distinguishing one individual from another are inadequate for making these...

“Liberal egalitarianism” refers to a family of political views that are “liberal” in taking individual rights to be of premier importance and “egalitarian” in holding that justice requires that political, social, and...

How do scientists reason when they posit unobservables to explain their observed results? For example, how did Watson and Crick reason that DNA had a double-helix structure when they observed Franklin’s image 51, or how...

How can habits of racialization be affected by art, in its reception and its creation? How can a carnal aesthetics help us understand Latinx life? What if we listen to photographs? How might they undo us? Can we be...

The word “metaphysics” conjures up thoughts of very hard questions about reality and deep, perhaps unresolvable, metaphysical mysteries. But is that the right way to think about the subject matter of metaphysics...

How should one live? What should one do? And what do these questions have to do with being a good person? In Unbecoming Persons: The Rise and Demine of the Modern Moral Self (University of Chicago Press, 2025), Ladelle...

Until recently, no one could access the detailed contents of your mind directly the way only you can. This level of protection of our mental data was guaranteed by the way we are built biologically – and it can no...